1D-3D coupled simulation method of hydraulic transients in ultra-long hydraulic systems based on OpenFOAM

Abstract

Transients in hydraulic systems are normally simulated by one-dimensional (1D) method of characteristics (MOC). When local three-dimensional (3D) flow patterns have crucial impacts on the hydraulic system characteristics, 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation should be incorporated. Since simulating an entire long system by the 3D CFD method is unrealistic, we have proposed several 1D-3D coupled simulation methods. However, the coupled methods are difficult to apply and popularise because most CFD codes are inaccessible and implementation details are unclear. Consequently, we utilised the open source toolbox OpenFOAM to develop a 1D-3D coupled simulation method and proved its feasibility by applying it to analysing practical problems. This paper describes the implementations of water compressibility, 1D-3D coupling, gas-liquid flow simulation, and dynamic mesh; shows their verifications of accuracy by benchmark cases; demonstrates the simulations of the closing and opening processes of a 194 km long water conveyance system. The gas-liquid flow patterns in the gate chamber and the maximum/minimum water head envelopes along the tunnels, which support the design optimisation of the project, are presented. It is shown that the method is computationally efficient and accurate, and can be applied to hydraulic transient analyses for water conveyance systems, pumped-storage power stations, etc.